“They”

“They” is the imagined collective enemy in Buster Keeton’s increasingly persecutory worldview. As the pronoun gathers the town into a hostile force, it gives his fear the shape of a conspiracy and helps convert confusion into certainty and destructive purpose.

A Collective Enemy

Buster’s use of “Them” collapses separate people into one threatening presence. He imagines the whole town as crawling with this enemy, but the belief does not consistently sustain him: at one point, the sense of purpose drains away, leaving weariness, depression, and a pounding headache. Even the thought of “Them” that had recently stirred righteous anger now brings exhaustion instead. The shift shows that this supposed collective is not a stable explanation so much as a focus for Buster’s changing distress.

His conviction also makes ordinary encounters seem like deliberate attacks. After a game is disrupted, he interprets the incident as evidence that his enemies have come after more than his reputation: they have ruined his game, too. The outburst enlarges an immediate frustration into a campaign against him. Once every setback can be assigned to “Them,” chance and disagreement become hard to distinguish from persecution.

Fear Becomes Certainty

Looking out the study window, Buster finds the street empty, yet reads that absence as temporary. He feels the unseen group gathering against him, as though its approach were already perceptible. The gap between what he can observe and what he believes is closing is central to the idea: “They” need not appear for Buster to treat their threat as present and imminent.

The pronoun therefore works as a self-confirming explanation. An empty street does not disprove the danger; it means the enemy has not yet arrived. A setback does not remain an isolated event; it becomes another sign of coordinated hostility. This logic intensifies Buster’s isolation while making imagined opposition feel more coherent than the evidence around him.

Gaunt’s Influence and the Bomb Plot

The belief acquires practical force when Leland Gaunt tells Ace Merrill that business has gone well and that he has work for him. Later, as Buster and Ace drive back toward town, Buster’s confusion falls away. He now believes he understands what “They” have been doing—every plan and plot—and explains his interpretation to Ace while Ace connects Hotpoint timers to blasting caps in the back of the van.

That return to apparent clarity is ominous rather than reassuring. Buster’s certainty arrives alongside preparations for the bombing campaign, giving his conspiratorial account a role in the violence directed against the town. “They” is not simply a name for Buster’s fear: it is the imagined opponent that helps organize his perception of events and accompanies his movement from suspicion toward action.

Narrative Function

The changing force of “They” traces Buster’s unstable passage from anger to exhaustion and then to renewed conviction. The term makes a complicated social world seem legible by dividing it into Buster and a unified hostile mass. Yet the street outside his window is empty, and the reader sees the destructive preparations that accompany his claim to understand the hidden plots. That contrast gives the pronoun its unsettling force: it presents persecution as knowledge precisely when Buster’s belief has become part of the danger.